1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns toy animal figures with four legs, particularly horses or the like, which have a device for accommodating a saddle on a body of rigid shape.
2. Description of the Prior Art
For some time now, toy figure sets have been commercially available and generally consist of at least one toy figure in the form of a replica of a human being, and sundry accessories for the or each such figure. In order to ensure that the figure(s) of the set can stand well, the legs thereof must be as rigid as possible, in addition, in order to achieve an appearance which corresponds as much as possible to that of an actual person, it must be attempted to arrange the legs at a small spacing from each other.
Attempts have been made to develop these known sets by associating the toy figures with representations of animals on which the figures can then "ride". In this context, it is, however, necessary that the legs of the (human) figures and the bodies of the animals should be so constructed that, when "riding", the legs should without difficulty be able to engage around the middle of the body, however, if one makes the animal figure relatively true to nature, i.e. with a proportionate body thickness, then mounting a human figure on it with the naturalistically small leg spacing is not possible.
It would be conceivable to provide the figures with bendable legs so as to enable them to "ride". In this case, however, difficulties arise in placing the figures into an acceptable standing position because of the need to straighten the legs for this purpose. Bending the legs to bring them to an appropriate leg spacing around the thickness of the body of the animal cannot be considered for visual reasons.
In order nevertheless to enable toy human figures with legs running in parallel and at a relatively small spacing from each other to ride on animal figures, it is also already known so to construct the animal figure that the body thereof is somewhat constricted or tapered in its middle region, wherein the constriction is gradual from the ends of the body. In this case it is possible to mount human figures with small leg spacing on the animal figures in order to "ride", even when a saddle is laid on the body. However, this known solution has the disadvantage that, because of the unnatural tapering or constriction of the middle of the body, the appearance of such toy figures differs from the natural to such an extent that a playing child is disturbed or bothered by it.